There it was again, a quiet, padding footstep at the edge of the lake, as if someone was circling toward her. The spellbook was a beacon to anyone in the cavern. It was too late to hide, so she tried to pretend she hadn’t heard anything. One hand crept slowly toward the knife tucked through her belt.
Whoever it was, it was no orc. The movements were too tentative, almost frightened.
She jumped to her feet, yanking the knife free.
A goblin stood before her, a crude spear ready to throw. The tip was sharpened bone, lashed in place by some sort of seaweed fibers. His blue skin was pale, wrapped tight around his bony limbs.
“I thought there were no goblins left in this mountain,” Jokra said, stepping sideways. That spear might not even penetrate her clothes, but a lucky shot could still kill her.
“You mean you thought you’d killed us all?” The goblin’s voice was rusty, but firm.
Jokra grimaced. “The dwarves drove us underground. We had to—”
“No, you didn’t.” He stepped closer, shifting his grip on the spear so he could keep the point aimed at her neck. “They attacked you again, didn’t they? I can hear the screams.”
Jokra tilted her head. She couldn’t hear the battle, but goblin ears were larger, their senses sharper. “They’ll kill you too,” she said. “Unless there are others ?” If so, maybe they could rally and catch the dwarves by surprise.
“I’m alone.” His words were flat. Empty. Hopeless.
“And the orc and the goblin learn to work together and defeat the dwarves, right? Jesus, Dad. It’s no wonder you could never quit your day job.” Talking cars, ninjas and zombies, orcs and goblins . . . this was her father’s legacy, the product of endless nights locked in his office, away from his family.
A bemused chuckle from the darkness. Or maybe that was her mind continuing to torment her. She couldn’t tell anymore. Her hands and feet tingled, and she felt nauseous. Her heart was beating too fast, and she was breathing like she had just done twenty minutes on the exercise bike, despite the lack of any real exertion.
“The least you could have done was write a story telling me how to escape from a mine cave-in,” she said.
Another chuckle, this one tinged with sadness. Someone else was here, sitting across the tunnel, almost close enough to touch. She could make out his shape from the light of the phone. She reached for her helmet lamp.
“Don’t.”
The familiar voice made her throat knot. She clasped her hands in her lap, afraid to do anything that might shatter the moment.
“Jokra doesn’t defeat the dwarves.”
“She—what?”
“She’s outnumbered a thousand to one. The story isn’t about some deus ex machina that lets her live happily ever after. Magic doesn’t work that way.”
“Sounds like a fucking depressing story.”
“Watch your language.” A snort. “But yes. I can’t imagine most editors taking this one.”
“Are you . . . is this another hallucination?”
He sighed. “The ‘Was it real or all a dream?’ conundrum is almost as clichéd as ‘But that’s impossible!’ Does it really matter, kiddo?”
“So how does it work?” The word “Dad” stuck in her throat. “Magic, I mean.”
“You used to know. When you were younger. You’d climb out of bed and run around like a little tornado of destruction, bringing those stories to life. That’s why the bedtime stories had to stop, because you’d never settle back down and go to sleep.”
“I brought you back?” In her thirst-induced fog, it almost made sense. She could smell him now. The faint scent of Old Spice, the spearmint gum he chewed to try to hide the cigarettes on his breath. “The ninja would have been more helpful.”
Another sad chuckle. “I’m sorry, Claire. It doesn’t work that way.”
“That story, ‘Spellbound.’ Mom and I went through your work after you . . . that’s not one of your stories.”
“It is now.” He continued before she could ask him to explain further. “He knew he wasn’t writing great literature. Nobody’s going to be writing papers about his work a hundred years from now. But he loved that ninja zombie-slayer, the homesick car, even Jokra the orc.”
“He?” She squeezed her head in her hands, trying to ease the pounding. “You’re not him?”
“No writer is that good.” Another laugh. “But your father poured himself into those stories. That’s what you brought to life. Not the surface elements, but the heart of his writing. The core of his stories. Even the ridiculous ones.”
She started to shake. “It’s been three and a half days. They think I’m dead.” She would be dead, soon enough. She doubted she could survive another day without food or water. “How does this end? Do I die alone in the darkness? Do they ever learn why, or is it just a stupid, senseless accident?”
“I don’t know.” A strong hand took hers, and she felt him scooting over to sit beside her. “But whatever happens, you won’t be alone.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, feeling the soft warmth of his favorite flannel shirt. He was right; he wasn’t her father. He was more like a blend of all of her best memories of her father. “What about you? I’ve got one more day at most, and you’ll be trapped—”
“Don’t worry about that. You brought me here, kiddo. Once you’re gone, so am I.”
“I’m sorry.” She shuddered with unshed tears. “I didn’t know.”
“Hush.” There was no fear in his voice as he wrapped his arms around her. “This is what he wanted. What I want. Why do you think he wrote all of those stories?”
The phone in her lap gave a warning buzz. The battery would die soon.
“I should write my good-byes, but I don’t know what to say.”
“Write the truth. Share yourself with whoever gets that letter.” He squeezed her hand. “I’ll even promise not to criticize your spelling.”
“That’ll be a first.” Her cracked lips tugged into a brief, faint smile. “Thank you.”
She tapped open a new e-mail message and began to write.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dylan Birtolo is a writer, a gamer, and a professional sword-swinger. He currently resides in the great Pacific Northwest where his evenings are filled with shape shifters, mythological demons, and epic battles. He has published a couple of fantasy novels and several short stories in multiple anthologies. He has also written pieces for game companies set in their worlds and co-authored a game manual.
He trains with the Seattle Knights, an acting troupe that focuses on stage combat, and has performed in live shows and for video shoots. In addition, he teaches at the academy for upcoming acting combatants. Endeavoring to be a true jack of all trades, he has worked as a software engineer, a veterinary technician in an emergency hospital, a martial arts instructor, a rock climbing guide, and a lab tech. He has had the honor of jousting, and yes, the armor is real—it weighs over 120 pounds.
Erik Scott de Bie is the author of numerous tales of speculative fiction, including the Forgotten Realms novels Ghostwalker, Depths of Madness, Downshadow, and Shadowbane. His short works have featured in anthologies such as Close Encounters of the Urban Kind, Beauty Has Her Way, Cobalt City Timeslip, and When the Hero Comes Home. A fencing enthusiast, he can never pass up a good fight scene accompanied by the sound of ringing steel.
His piece “Ten Thousand Cold Nights” draws upon the Japanese myth of the competition between the legendary masters Muramasa and Masamune. Each challenged to make a better blade, the two smiths tested their respective masterworks in a stream. Mercilessly, Muramasa’s bloodthirsty sword cut the leaves, fish, water, and the very air that struck its blade: it destroyed anything that came into its path. By contrast, Masamune’s sword did not cut a single leaf or a single fish, and neither the water nor air was harmed by its edge. Muramasa boasted of his sword’s deadly efficacy, all the while mocking Masamune for crafting a blade that could not cut anything. In the end, Masamun
e was declared the victor, as his discerning blade did not needlessly cut that which was innocent and worthy of preservation.
Married with cats, de Bie lives in Seattle. Catch up with him on erikscottdebie.com.
Eugie Foster calls home a mildly haunted, fey-infested house in metro Atlanta that she shares with her husband Matthew. After receiving her master’s degree in psychology, she retired from academia to pen flights of fancy. She also edits legislation for the Georgia General Assembly, which from time to time she suspects is another venture into flights of fancy. Eugie received the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette and was named the Author of the Year by Bards and Sages. Her fiction has also received the 2002 Phobos Award, been translated into seven languages, and been a finalist for the Hugo, Black Quill, Bram Stoker, and BSFA awards. Her publication credits number over one hundred and include stories in Realms of Fantasy, Interzone, Cricket, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, and Fantasy Magazine; podcasts Escape Pod, Pseudopod, and Pod-castle ; and anthologies Best New Fantasy and Best New Romantic Fantasy 2. Her short story collection Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice is available from Norilana Books. Visit her online at www.eugiefoster.com.
Jim C. Hines’ latest book is The Snow Queen’s Shadow, the final book in his series about butt-kicking fairy tale heroines (because Sleeping Beauty was always meant to be a ninja, and Snow White makes a bad-ass witch). He’s also the author of the humorous Goblin Quest trilogy, as well as more than forty published short stories in markets such as Realms of Fantasy, Sword & Sorceress, and Turn the Other Chick. He has never actually written a story about time-traveling, zombie-slaying British ninjas, but now thinks it could be fun. He lives in Michigan with his wife, two children, and half an ark’s worth of pets. You can find his web site and blog at www.jimchines.com.
Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2011 books are Endurance and Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh, along with paperback releases of two of his other titles. His short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is a past winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.
Tanith Lee was born in North London (UK) in 1947. Because her parents were professional dancers (ballroom, Latin American) and had to live where the work was, she attended a number of truly terrible schools, and didn’t learn to read—she is also dyslexic—until almost age eight, and then only because her father taught her. This opened the world of books to Lee, and by nine she was writing. After much better education at a grammar school, Lee went on to work in a library. This was followed by various other jobs—shop assistant, waitress, clerk—plus a year at art college when she was twenty-five. In 1974 this mosaic ended when DAW Books, under the leadership of Donald A. Woll-heim, bought and published Lee’s The Birthgrave, and thereafter twenty-six of her novels and collections.
Since then Lee has written around ninety books and approaching three hundred short stories. Four of her radio plays have been broadcast by the BBC; she also wrote two episodes (“Sarcophagus” and “Sand”) for the TV series Blake’s 7. Some of her stories regularly get read on Radio 7.
Lee writes in many styles in and across many genres, including horror, SF, fantasy, historical, detective, contemporary-psychological, children and young adult. Her preoccupation, though, is always people. In 1992 she married the writer-artist-photographer John Kaiine, her companion since 1987. They live on the Sussex Weald, near the sea, in a house full of books and plants, with two black and white overlords called cats.
David D. Levine is a lifelong SF reader whose midlife crisis was to take a sabbatical from his high-tech job to attend Clarion West in 2000. It seems to have worked. He made his first professional sale in 2001, won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2002, was nominated for the John W. Campbell award in 2003, was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Campbell again in 2004, and won a Hugo in 2006 (Best Short Story, for “Tk’Tk’Tk”). A collection of his short stories, Space Magic, won the Endeavour Award in 2009. In January of 2010 he spent two weeks at a simulated Mars base in the Utah desert, and you can read about that at http://www.bentopress.com/mars/. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kate Yule, with whom he edits the fanzine Bento; their website is at www.bentopress.com. .
Seanan McGuire was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, which probably explains her affection for the region, rattlesnakes and all. Her short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination and Westward Weird. Mina Norton, the bartending alchemist, first showed up in After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar, and has shown no immediate signs of leaving.
Seanan was the winner of the 2010 John W. Campbell Award, and is currently the author of two urban fantasy series: the October Daye books, which follow the adventures a half-fae knight errant, and InCryptid, which focus on a family of cryptozoologists. She also writes as Mira Grant, author of the Newsflesh trilogy. To relax, she occasionally records albums of filk music. Unsurprisingly, Seanan doesn’t sleep very much.
Seanan currently lives in a crumbling farmhouse with far too many books, several large blue cats, and an extensive collection of strange and unusual toys. When not writing, she attends more conventions than is strictly probable, resulting in her bringing home more books and more toys (although usually not more cats).
Jody Lynn Nye lists her main career activity as “spoiling cats.” When not engaged upon this worthy occupation, she writes fantasy and science fiction.
Before breaking away from gainful employment to write full time, Jody worked as a file clerk, bookkeeper at a small publishing house, freelance journalist and photographer, accounting assistant, and costume maker. For four years, she was a technical operator and technical operations manager at WFBN-TV Chicago.
Since 1987 she has published forty books and more than one hundred short stories. Among her novels are her epic fantasy series The Dreamland, beginning with Waking in Dreamland; five contemporary humorous fantasies, beginning with Mythology 101; three medical SF novels; the Taylor’s Ark series; and Strong Arm Tactics , a humorous military SF novel. Jody wrote The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern, a companion to Anne Mc-Caffrey’s popular world. She collaborated with Anne on four novels, including The Ship Who Won, and wrote its solo sequel, The Ship Errant. Jody co-authored the Visual Guide to Xanth with Piers Anthony, and edited an anthology of humorous stories about mothers entitled Don’t Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear! She wrote eight books with the late Robert Lynn Asprin, License Invoked , a contemporary fantasy set in New Orleans, and seven of Asprin’s Myth Adventures, including the latest, Myth-Fortunes.
Her newest books are Dragons Deal, third in the Dragons series begun by Robert Asprin, and View from the Imperium, a humorous military SF novel.
Over the last two decades, Jody has taught in numerous writing workshops and participated on hundreds of panels about writing and being published. In 2007 she taught fantasy writing at Columbia College Chicago.
Jody lives in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, with her husband Bill Fawcett, a writer, game designer, and book packager, and one cat, Jeremy.
Fiona Patton was born in Calgary, Alberta, and grew up in the United States. She now lives in rural Ontario with her partner, Tanya Huff, a huge pile of cats, and two sweet Sheltie/Papillons. She has written seven heroic fantasy novels for DAW books. The latest, The Shining City, is due out in April of 2011. “The Sentry” is the thirty-third short story she has written for Tekno Books and DAW.
Jean Rabe tugs on old socks with her two dogs when she isn’t writing. She’s the author of more than two dozen fantasy and adventure novels and more than 60 short stories. She’s edited twenty anthologies and more magazines than she cares to count. She lives in Wisconsin, where she hibernates in the winter and roots for the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, and occasionally the Pittsburgh Steeler
s.
Laura Resnick is the author of the popular Esther Diamond series, whose releases include Unsympathetic Magic, Doppelgangster, Disappearing Nightly, and Vam-parazzi . She has also written traditional fantasy novels such as In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, and The White Dragon, which made the “Year’s Best” lists of Publishers Weekly and VOYA. An opinion columnist, frequent public speaker, award-winning former romance writer, and the Campbell Award-winning author of many short stories, she is on the Web at www.lauraresnick.com.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning, bestselling writer. In the science fiction field, she has won two Hugos and a World Fantasy Award, as well as several other awards. Her bestselling Retrieval Artist series has been called one of the top 10 best science fiction detective series ever by I09. She is about to publish her Diving into the Wreck novels, with City of Ruins and Boneyards upcoming. And her entire backlist—including short stories—is coming into print, starting with electronic books and moving slowly to print books. She also writes under a half a dozen pen names in a variety of genres. Find out more about her at www.kristinekathrynrusch.com.
Anton Strout is the author of the Simon Canderous urban fantasy series, as well as the author of half a dozen tales for DAW anthologies. Anton was born in the Berkshire Hills mere miles from writing heavyweights Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville and currently lives in the haunted corn maze that is New Jersey (where nothing paranormal ever really happens, he assures you). He has been a featured speaker and workshopper at San Diego Comic-Con, Gencon, New York Comic-Con, and the Brooklyn Book Festival. In his scant spare time, he is a writer, a sometimes actor, sometimes musician, occasional RPGer, and the world’s most casual-and-controller-smashing video-gamer. He can often be found lurking the darkened halls of www.antonstrout.com.
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